


Slow Burn

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Difficult transitions., Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 10:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20191102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: These two are not easy to write, sometimes. The balance between serious and comic, witty and abrasive, tough and twee, open and defensive? Yeah.I don't know if these two can carry the sheer weight of "first times" Mycroft and Greg Lestrade did for me over on "Sherlock." But I can foresee at least a few rounds of trying to figure out how the two move from not-quite-a-couple-yet to fully-self-aware-couple-with-intent. Trying to find a way to get them across the line fully in character is fascinating...as Crowley is far more shy and reticent and afraid of rejection than he admits--and far too good at ignoring his own feelings...and Aziraphale is far less innocent than his ingenue sparkle might suggest, and yet that innocent sparkle is real. Very real.So. See if this one pleases you.OH, addendum, because it's too interesting not to comment on, and too small to currently rate a meta.Who else has noticed that Crowley has the Maltese Falcon? It's on a gaudy pedestal to the right of the door from his office to the plant room, and you can see it AND its distinctive shadow right before Crowley goes to water his plants.





	Slow Burn

“Well, then. That was lovely.”

“Oh, aye. ‘Lovely.’ Do it again, sometime?”

“I would think so! And sushi. We should do sushi soon.”

“Aye. Aye. Nothin’ like a bit of raw fish for a lovely evening, Angel.”

“Well—there isn’t. Is there?”

“Well. Maybe a bottle of good Scotch.”

“Or brandy. Brandy’s good.”

“Aye. Calvados. And hard liquor. I’m for a bit of Pernod, me. Or ouzo. Or arrak.”

“Oh. Dear. Really?”

“Not your sort of thing?”

“Well—licorice, you know. I have trouble getting behind anything that tastes like you already sobered yourself up from it once or twice already.”

“Character—that’s what it is. Character. But—all right. No licorice, then. Cider, perhaps? A trip out to Somerset and a few pints of cider?”

“We could do that. It would be—“

“Lovely. Aye. Thought maybe.”

The two fell silent. That had been happening more and more often since the failed Apocalypse. They were together more. But they were also run aground on social uncertainty more, too. More and more they were running out of small talk and prattle.

Look at them. They’d walked back to the door of Aziraphale’s bookstore from Mele e Pere, a trattoria on the corner of Brewer Street and the alley between Lexington Street and Bridle Lane. Aziraphale indulged in a plate of ricotta gnocchi with truffle and smoked ricotta. Crowley indulged in a prolonged list of vermouth cocktails, all somewhat more precious than his own tastes would have preferred, but it was a house speciality, and he had to admit the cocktails were not only good—they got the job done. He was seeing two of Aziraphale, which meant he had twice as many angels to not-know how to converse with.

Aziraphale was, as ever, quaint…but he was a slightly more modern version of quaint than had been his wont for some decades. He was wearing something Crowley vaguely thought he recognized. He’d been vaguely recognizing it all night long, though, and failing to actually identify it. The outfit was a suit—pale taupe or clay, with a fedora. It reminded Crowley of Ealing Comedies and Alec Guinness before he was knighted and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. It triggered memories of the mid-twentieth century he could not quite place…and was sure he should.

It made his corporeal heart flutter, and his wings, on the ethereal plane, shift and stir restlessly.

Crowley himself was at a severe disadvantage, in mid-fashion shift. The jarring events of the Apocalapse had rattled his nerve, triggering a near-obsessive need to re-costume himself.

He hadn’t found his new look. He’d been flailing, rather. There had been a brief, and entirely unsuccessful foray into disco pants: black, of course, with a stripe of thin red piping up the outer seam. He’d attempted a venture into lace-trimmed cavalier fashion; a too-youthful shot at spandex; a zoot suit he’d once loved until wartime rationing forced him to give up the flowing pants and wasp-waisted jacket. All had been quickly abandoned, but the current skinny black jeans, black cashmere jumper, and short-waisted dress jacket was neither right nor remotely cool.

To Crowley, his lack of fashion felt like an odd combination of discomforts, blending the molting of feathers and the shedding of his serpent skin. Somewhere reptile instincts sulked in ethereal spirit and itched. And itched. And itched.

He needed to sleep, he thought, sullenly. For a week or two. A month or two.

But he’d have to tell Aziraphale he was hibernating.

He’d never had to tell Aziraphale before. In all the years they’d known each other, they’d never been so…

“Clingy,” Crowley thought. “We are clingy. I am clingy. Angel’s clingy. He hasn’t got Heaven any more. I haven’t got Hell. No work. No duty. No…nothing. We’re living in each other’s pockets, and I can’t do this. I can’t. I just—I can’t.”

“Not going to be around this week,” he blurted. “Maybe longer.”

Aziraphale looked up from fiddling with his watch-chain. It was quite unfair—he looked very put-together in a shirt the faint blue of pale dawn, and the cut of his suit just loose enough to be kind to his Pooh-bear figure. He frowned, unhappy.

“Busy?”

There was little for either of them to be busy with, these days.

“Busy,” Crowley said, setting his chin and gazing off into the middle distance, hoping his glasses hid his own sense he was lying. “Got stuff. To do. Whole new world. Got to make plans.”

What he had to do was turn on the house heat to blazing, convert to his serpent form, and coil up in bed and sleep. Maybe that would bake the restless misery out of him.

“Plans.” The angel sounded unconvinced—and more than a little concerned.

“Thinking of going freelance trickster.” It was a half-truth. So far he’d already succeeded at his first inclination—using demon wiles and a knowledge of the net to assure himself and Aziraphale of “Wealth beyond the wildest dreams of mortal man” stuff. Property tax in Soho wasn’t cheap, after all. But beyond that?

Maybe when he woke up he’d be feeling more like mischief for the fun of it.

Aziraphale seemed subdued. He didn’t question the lie, instead saying, “Keep in touch. I’ll…” He stopped, instead just saying again, “Just keep in touch.”

“Reporting in to you, now, Angel?”

“No. But…I could look after your plants. Make sure your mail’s taken in. Things like that.”

What a nightmare that would be. He could see his angel finding him, a big ball of snoring serpent, with no explanation for his change in plans.

“Got it all sorted already,” Crowley said. “But…thanks.”

“Best not thank me,” Aziraphale said, reflexively.

“Your side wouldn’t like it.” Crowley was, suddenly, so tired of Aziraphale's pointless virtue...

“Given _you_ are ‘my side,’ it appears not.” There was a flicker of bitterness in that.

It was like a slug in the face. They’d both been sharper, nastier lately, too. As though all their blessings were still somehow less of a comfort than they might be. Change wasn’t working out quite as hoped, was it?

Crowley looked at his angel, and felt the regrets descend like a cold front from the North, complete with storm warnings—and no hope of a sheltering wing this time around.

“Are you…are you going to try to get more holy water?” Aziraphale said without warning, the words ripped from some deep well of despair. “Please. If you must…I’ll get it.” He slumped, but continued, “I got it for you before. I’ll get it for you again.”

It hadn’t occurred to Crowley—and even as he crashed into the angel’s worry and grief, he found a moment to examine that: here he was, frustrated, unhappy, depressed. But he hadn’t even thought of getting his hands on holy water.

“No!” The roar was reflexive, as was the open-armed exasperation. “Angel, no…not going to get holy water. Don’t want you to, either.” He felt helpless. Aziraphale was pale, forlorn, slump-shouldered, wilted in a way that he’d never put up with from a plant. “Do you really think I let you take my place in Hell, just to go dip myself in holy water anyway? Let you get pawed and poked by Beelzy and Hastur and that lot? Get dragged down to my level? For nothing?” He glowered. “I’m offended, Angel. Offended.”

Aziraphale’s lips tightened and his posture improved. His chin rose, reminding Crowley of Dame Maggie Smith going all McGonnigal on someone. “Well you can hardly blame me for wondering. One worries.”

“Ooooh. ‘One’ is it? No chance _you_ worry. Not about me.”

A haughty sniff tried to cancel out stricken eyes, and failed. “We’re alive. Pardon me for wanting to keep us that way.”

“Nice deflect, Angel. But it’s not about you or whatever you conjure up to worry about. I’m just—I just—“ He stopped, then.

“Yes?”

His own chin rose, and he looked coldly down his nose. “I simply need some ‘me’ time.”

He didn’t say “so there.” It would have been no surprise, though, had the angel taken it as given.

“Very well. 'Having a moment,' I suppose. Let me know when you’re available to meet again,” Aziraphale said, and turned briskly toward the bookshop.

The sudden turn, the movement of the suit—it came back to him.

“I know that suit!”

The angel stopped like the Bentley when Crowley slammed its breaks—supernatural breech of the laws of motion, as though velocity and momentum and mass had nothing to do with anything. Then, defensively, “No doubt you do. You know most of my favorites.”

“I do…I know it like I know the bad bits of Delhi.” He stalked toward Aziraphale, brow furrowed as he tried to figure it out. “Not your usual, is it? Too modern. And too…too…” He shook his head.

Pale clay, he thought. Blue shirt. Cute little tartan bow-tie shot through with gold like sunshine.

“And you’ve got your hair cut!” Not much: Aziraphale’s idea of a radical hair change was to let the barber give him a bit of sideburn. But it was just a tad shorter, and an effort had been made to give it a crisp side part. The effort had failed. But it still looked very period.

And the fedora.

He’d seen that outfit.

He knew that outfit.

He loved that outfit, which was ridiculous, because if Aziraphale had asked Crowley he’d have said it was entirely too modern for him, lacking all the little romantic touches he adored so in clothing. Aside from the long cut of the jacket, leaving it an open question if he were wearing a suit jacket or a trench coat, only the hint of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and the whisper of Alec Guinness making people laugh their arses off in Ealing Comedies contributed that bit of sentimental romance that made an Aziraphale costume his very own.

He circled the angel, trying to sort out what the hell he was feeling and seeing. Angel—his angel—was pink and flustered and angry and dismayed and embarrassed all at once. His lower lip quivered, and he held his fedora cupped to his breast, all gentlemanly.

“You’re being ridiculous, Crowley. We both keep favorites. You’re not going to give up that scoop-necked Victorian waistcoat until a century after it falls to pieces.”

Serpent eyes narrowed behind dark specs. “And we both trot our favorites out for _reasonssss,”_ he hissed back.

Reasons. What reasons could Aziraphale have? Current fashion let him get away with so much he really adored: brocade here, moleskin there, velvet, cashmere. Longer jackets with clearer waistlines. Swoonier trousers. What was he doing wearing something right out of a WWII movie—noir or comedy, either way?

A memory flashed, and Crowley barked with laughter. The memory of Aziraphale’s voice wailing, “You can’t kill me! There’ll be paperwork!” was sweet…so sweet.

“The Blitz!” he crowed. “I knew I knew that suit. The Blitz. Buggering around playing Secret Agent. I’d have thought you’d have burned that suit the minute you got back to the shop,” he said.

“Well I didn’t.” Aziraphale could sulk better than anyone except, perhaps, Crowley himself.

Yes, and why hadn’t he? What in the name of all that was hellish had caused the angel to keep a too-plain, too boxy, boring suit without even a flash of gold piping or fuzzy moleskin? A suit fit to pass in a time of conformity and rationing?

Still…

A flash of affection warmed Crowley’s heart. His angel had been so annoyingly fluffy. Secret agent? And that side part that failed to take…adorable. And his relaxed trust, as he considered Crowley’s new additions to his name…sure that he was safe now the demon was near.

It had been a lark, really. The whole thing. Crowley had seldom had such a gratifying exit…his angel standing in the ruins of the bombed church, fedora in one hand, satchel in the other, eyes shining…

Crowley had felt like the star of a movie. The handsome, cool, charismatic star of a very good movie.

His skin rose in goosebumps thinking about it.

Only later had he realized he loved the angel—the night Aziraphale had broken all his own rules to protect the demon by giving him a tartan thermos flask of holy water…while pleading with Crowley not to use it on himself.

He remembered sitting in the Bentley, the thermos in his hands, Angel quivering like a worried golden cocker spaniel in the seat beside him…his own heart beating like a drum, amazed.

Amazed.

His angel—his angel had given him death, to save him from death.

His angel.

But knowing—once he understood himself—he suspected that he’d been gone over the angel more than a bit longer that that...

Decades longer.

And the Blitz? And the church? And the books? And that feeling of being a heaped up blend of Cary Grant and Bogart and Niven and Guinness and all the most marvelous actors?

His memory of his angel’s face, wide-eyed and smitten…

He brushed the once spiffing, fashionable cut of the jacket lapel, and found himself smiling a goofy smile. “Bugger. I do know this suit.”

“It’s hardly the sort of thing one can keep as a secret,” Aziraphale huffed.

Except, of course, if one hid it in one’s closet and didn’t take it out from the bombing of the church until…

Crowley searched his memory.

“You only got that back out lately,” he said. “Since Adam and all that.”

“The Apocalypse?”

“The Apocalapse. The Not-pocalypse. Whatever. Since then.”

“It just seemed like a time for a bit of a change.” Defensive strop poured off of the angel.

Crowley could be slow. But he wasn’t as slow as Aziraphale about things like this.

“You brought it out because you went all soppy!” He grinned a far too self-satisfied grin. “Because you remembered that night.”

“You flatter yourself.”

“Do not. You brought it out because you _like _me.”

“I don’t.”

“You do…” He chuckled, and traced a finger around the shawl collar of the waistcoat hidden inside the taupe suit jacket; then up the placket of the blue shirt, and then fondled the silly blue tartan bow tie. “You do.”

Poor angel—back so straight, jaw so set, head so high, trying so hard to maintain some degree of dignity.

Crowley was Crowley. His own depression and desire to hibernate slipped from his mind as his own head lifted, his own mood lightened. In seconds he’d have sworn he’d never been depressed, and if depressed it had never been because he had no idea how to address Aziraphale anymore yet longed with all his scorched, battered soul to come ever closer to his angel. It hadn’t happened. And if it had, it didn’t matter, because now he knew: his angel had saved the suit from the church—and had worn it again because he…

He…

“You do…care about me? Don’t you?” The fear was sudden, and crushing.

Aziraphale’s head dropped, and he whispered. “I do. But—if you could please not torture me too much about it? I know it’s not your thing. And I suppose I can’t stop you laughing. But—“

“Aw, shut it,” Crowley growled, heart recovering at record speed. And he leaned in and gently kissed the angel.

“Oh.” Aziraphale drew back, and gazed wide-eyed at the demon.

Crowley slid the glasses down the bridge of his nose, until golden eyes looked fondly at his angel. “Nothing else to say?”

“I don’t…I don’t know what to say…”

The demon smiled, unaware of the love pouring off him like steam off a boiling teakettle. Earlier he’d had no idea what to say—but that was then. This was now.

“What you should say is, ‘Why don’t you come in for a drink, Crowley, and we can explore this further.’”

“Really?” Aziraphale was wide-eyed.

“Really.”

The life and mischief blossomed in angel-blue eyes. “Well. In that case, after you, my dear.”

“Not ‘Get thee behind me, foul demon?’”

The angel’s eyes shone brighter still, and his grin was almost evil.

“I’m saving that one for later,” he said, and shooed his demon into the shop ahead of him, already planning a few sorts of wile-thwarting he intended to fail at entirely.


End file.
